Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D.

Professor and Co-Director

Bio

Dr. Andrew N. Meltzoff holds the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Endowed Chair and is the Co-Director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. A graduate of Harvard University, with a PhD from Oxford University, he is an internationally renowned expert on infant and child development. His discoveries about infant imitation have revolutionized our understanding of early cognition, personality, and brain development. His research on social-emotional development and children’s understanding of other people has helped shape policy and practice.

Dr. Meltzoff's 20 years of research on young children has had far-reaching implications for cognitive science, especially for ideas about memory and its development; for brain science, especially for ideas about common coding and shared neural circuits for perception and action; and for early education and parenting, particularly for ideas about the importance of role models, both adults and peers, in child development.

He is the co-author of two books about early learning and the brain: The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us about the Mind (Morrow Press, 2000) and Words, Thoughts and Theories (MIT Press, 1997). He is also co-editor of The Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution and Brain Bases (Cambridge University Press, 2002), a unique, multidisciplinary volume combining brain science, evolutionary theory, and developmental psychology.

Dr. Meltzoff is the recipient of a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health. In 2005, he was the recipient of an award for outstanding research from the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics and the Kenneth Craik Award in Psychology, Cambridge University, England. Dr. Meltzoff is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society. He has been inducted into the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and is the recipient of the James McKeen Cattell Sabbatical Award.

Dr. Meltzoff is active in volunteer work concerning children, having served on the board of directors of the Foundation for Early Learning, the board of directors of the University Child Development School, the National Advisory Committee for Grants of the March of Dimes Foundation, and the national advisory board of Parents Magazine.

Dr. Meltzoff has appeared on the PBS programs Scientific American Frontiers and NOVA, on ABC's World News Now, NBC's Today Show, the CBC Discovery series, and in numerous other media outlets. He is married to Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl, and they have one daughter.

Professional Offices and Awards

Fellow
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Psychological Association
Association for Psychological Science
Norwegian National Academy of Science and Letters
Cognitive Science Society

Member
American Academy of Arts & Sciences
National Research Council and Institute of Medicine Board for Children, Youth, and Families

Meltzoff, A. N. (2013). Origins of social cognition: Bidirectional self-other mapping and the “Like-Me” hypothesis. In M. Banaji & S. Gelman (Eds.), Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us (pp. 139-144). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Click here to receive a reprint

Meltzoff, A. N. (2013). Origins of social cognition: Bidirectional self-other mapping and the “Like-Me” hypothesis. In M. Banaji & S. Gelman (Eds.), Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us (pp. 139-144). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Click here to receive a reprint

Meltzoff, A. N. (1990). Towards a developmental cognitive science: The implications of cross-modal matching and imitation for the development of representation and memory in infancy. In A. Diamond (Ed.), The development and neural bases of higher cognitive functions, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 608, 1-31. New York: New York Academy of Sciences. Click here to receive a reprint

Atance, C. M., Bernstein, D. M., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2010). Thinking about false belief: It's not just what children say, but how long it takes them to say it. Cognition, 116, 297-301. Click here to receive a reprint

Meltzoff, A. N. (1990). Foundations for developing a concept of self: The role of imitation in relating self to other and the value of social mirroring, social modeling, and self practice in infancy. In D. Cicchetti & M. Beeghly (Eds.), The self in transition: Infancy to childhood (pp. 139-164). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Click here to receive a reprint

Brooks, R., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2005). The development of gaze following and its relation to language. Developmental Science, 8, 535-543. Click here to receive a reprint

Kuhl, P. K., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1997). Evolution, nativism, and learning in the development of language and speech. In M. Gopnik (Ed.), The inheritance and innateness of grammars (pp. 7-44). New York: Oxford University Press. Click here to receive a reprint

Gopnik, A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1987). The development of categorization in the second year and its relation to other cognitive and linguistic developments. Child Development, 58, 1523-1531. Click here to receive a reprint

Connections to Philosophy of Mind

Meltzoff, A. N. (2013). Origins of social cognition: Bidirectional self-other mapping and the “Like-Me” hypothesis. In M. Banaji & S. Gelman (Eds.), Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us (pp. 139-144). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Click here to receive a reprint

Rast, M., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1995). Memory and representation in young children with Down syndrome: Exploring deferred imitation and object permanence. Development and Psychopathology, 7, 393-407. Click here to receive a reprint

About the Lab

Dr. Meltzoff’s Infant and Child Studies Lab conducts interdisciplinary research on developmental science ranging from newborns (42-minutes old) through elementary-school children and teenagers. His lab explores how infants learn from people and about people – the development of social cognition. One line of work in the lab investigates powerful social learning mechanisms, such as imitative learning, before language. This has led to a wide range of collaborative studies involving the development of theory of mind, investigations of the development of neural mirroring systems, and the mechanisms of human empathy. In other work, Meltzoff’s lab is building interdisciplinary bridges between developmental science and social psychology. This line of research explores children’s identity formation, including work on math-gender stereotypes in elementary-school children, and issues about psychology and education. Below is more information about the researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and research staff working with Dr. Meltzoff at the Institute, as well as information about former group members who are now running their own labs.

Faculty, Posdoctoral Fellows and Students

Rechele Brooks, Research Assistant Professor, Infant Studies LabDr. Brooks is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and has her laboratory studying infant joint visual attention at I-LABS. She received her BA from Pomona College and her Ph.D. from Boston University. Her main line of research centers on joint visual attention, including eye gaze, joint engagement, and pointing. She has been examining the development of these important social cues in infancy and the attributions infants make about others’ perceptions and goals. She is also interested in how early social cognition contributes to the understanding of language and theory of mind in children with typical and atypical development.

Dario Cvencek, Ph.D.Dr. Cvencek is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Andrew Meltzoff. Before coming to the Institute, he earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at the University of Washington, working with Tony Greenwald. Dr. Cvencek’s research interests focus on the development of academic gender stereotypes towards math and reading in elementary school children. Dr. Cvencek investigates the role of social learning in the development of stereotypes, for example math–gender stereotypes. He also considers how this learning of stereotypes in children may be facilitated by a tendency of the human mind to keep one's cognitions consistent with one another.

Allison Master, Ph.D.Dr. Master is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Andrew Meltzoff and Dr. Sapna Cheryan. Before coming to the Institute, she earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology at Stanford University, working with Dr. Carol Dweck, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Yale University. Her research interests include social-psychological processes that form the foundation of motivation, identity, and achievement from early childhood through adulthood, as well as how cues to personal identity or group membership may affect stereotyping and other social judgments and behaviors. Currently she is investigating how stereotypes may affect adolescents’ interest in STEM fields.

Leoandra Onnie Rogers, Ph.D.Dr. Rogers is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Andrew Meltzoff. Prior to coming to the Institute, she earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from New York University with Dr. Niobe Way, and her bachelor's degree in psychology and education from UCLA. Dr. Rogers' research focuses on identity development among urban youth. Her work examines how cultural norms, expectations, and stereotypes influence how youth see themselves, particularly in the context of schooling and education. Currently, Dr. Rogers is investigating young children's self-perceptions and early understandings of stereotypes.

Tal-Chen RabinowitchTal-Chen is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Andrew Meltzoff. Her research at I-LABS examines the connections between music, synchrony and emotional and social interaction in toddlers and young children. She obtained her Ph.D at the Centre for Music and Science, University of Cambridge, where she investigated the relationship between music and empathy, demonstrating that regular participation of school children in musical group interaction sessions can potentially increase their capacity for emotional empathy. She next did some work on twin children, exploring the reciprocal effects of synchronous rhythmic interaction and perceived similarity. Tal-Chen is also a flautist and has played in various orchestras and ensembles in Israel and in the UK. Tal-Chen’s work is funded by a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship and a GRAMMY Foundation Grant.

Anna Waismeyer, Ph.D.Dr. Waismeyer is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Andrew Meltzoff. Before coming to the Institute, she earned a Ph.D. in comparative and developmental psychology at the University of California at Berkeley with Dr. Lucia Jacobs and Dr. Alison Gopnik. Dr. Waismeyer's research interests focus on how toddlers and young children make inferences about objects and events. Her research explores the development of children's inferential learning strategies both in spatial and in causal tasks and how children's developing social understanding may play a role as an aid to learning within non-pedagogical situations. In her current work, she is examining toddlers' abilities to learn about causal relationships from observation of both deterministic and probabilistic covariations.

Elizabeth Zack, Ph.D.Dr. Zack is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Andrew Meltzoff. Before coming to the Institute, she earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology at Georgetown University, working with Rachel Barr. Dr. Zack’s research interests focus on infant imitation from 2-dimensional sources such as television, books, and computers. She investigates infants’ ability to transfer actions from 2D images to 3-dimensional objects in the real world. She is also interested in the role social information plays in transfer of learning between 2D and 3D during infancy.

Research Staff

Calle FisherMs. Fisher earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Oregon. Since 1979, she has administered developmental tests and conducted internet research in Dr. Andrew N. Meltzoff's lab. Her area of expertise is as a behavioral coder as well as a person who tests children in experimental settings.

Linden HaleLinden Hale graduated from the University of Washington in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. As a lab manager and a research assistant for Dr. Rechele Brooks in the Joint Visual Attention Lab, Linden assists in the investigation of infants’ social cognitive development. In the future, Linden plans to pursue a doctorate in developmental psychology, with an emphasis on infant social-emotional cognitive development.

Craig HarrisMr. Harris has a masters in Early Childhood Special Education from the University of Washington. He oversees research in Dr. Andrew N. Meltzoff's lab studying early development, including studies on imitation, intention, and memory. Harris also has special expertise in statistical analyses having completed workshops and classes in biostatistics and with Jim Sackett.

Dawn Hathaway
Ms. Hathaway received her bachelor of arts degree in English from Seattle University and previously worked at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She handles recruitment and scheduling of research subjects and other administrative duties.

Craig MaddoxMr. Maddox is a utility player in Dr. Andrew Meltzoff's lab, bringing his undergraduate training in Education, Mathematics and Physics from Western Michigan University to bear as a Research Study Assistant. Craig is the primary tester of participants in a variety of cognitive science studies, gathering, recording, and organizing experimental data. Much of this research, including the investigation of math-gender stereotypes, is closely related to his teaching background and personal interests.

Joy MendozaMs. Mendoza graduated from the University of Washington in 2012, with a bachelor's degree in Psychology and a minor in Global Health. As a research assistant for Dr. Anna Waismeyer in Dr. Andrew N. Meltzoff's lab, Joy aids in the investigation of children's development of inferential learning strategies in causal tasks and assists with gathering, coding, and organizing experimental data.